How Instagram helped the founders of The Infatuation quit their jobs and work full-time on food reviews

While at a food market called Dinerama in London's
Shoreditch district, Chris Stang pulled out his phone, like so
many of us would do, to snap a photo of the burger he was about
to eat.

A snarky Londoner next to him glanced over and said, "What, do
you have a food Instagram or something?"

Stang's reply: "Actually, yeah."

But Stang's page isn't just any little account: It's The Infatuation, a multi-city bar and
restaurant review website that has a legion of diehard fans.

Stang, cofounder and CEO of The Infatuation, told Business
Insider that when he explained to the stranger judging him for
his food photo what his Instagram account was called, her
immediate response was, "Oh my God, I follow that!" and pulled
out her phone to show him the various Infatuation accounts (and
there are many) that she followed on Instagram.

That conversation, Stang says, happened three months before The
Infatuation even launched in London.

A quick scroll through the page - and the company's other
accounts, like @infatuation_nyc and
@infatuation_sf - will
show you mouth-watering photos of barbecue, pasta, and decadent
desserts.

But what actually is The Infatuation?

"We're your friend,"Andrew
Steinthal, cofounder and head of partnerships, told
Business Insider. "That's always what we set out to be
originally. We want to be that friend that you trust to get
information, mainly about restaurants and where to drink."

The Infatuation began in April
2009 as a solution to stuffy restaurant reviews of old. Stang and
Steinthal were friends and music industry executives, and the
site began as a side project with the plan to turn it into a
full-time gig. That happened in April 2014, when both founders
quit their jobs to work on The Infatuation full-time.

Today, the site traffics in
reviews and guides of local bars and restaurants in cities
ranging from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. Not only does the
tone and language set it apart from other food-focused sites, but
so does the specificity of the guides, like "Where To Have A
Last-Minute Group Dinner" and "The Kind-Of-Healthy
Brunch Guide." The site will expand to cover Seattle in June,
and will add Paris as its next international city this
summer.

But where its power really comes from is Instagram. The
Infatuation runs 22 separate accounts - one for each of its
active cities, a main account, plus accounts like @pizza, @avocadotoast, and @burger. The company also has its own
branded hashtag, #eeeeeats, that has been used millions of times
on Instagram - 7,060,885 posts
have that hashtag at last count. Its main account, @infatuation, has more than 704,000
followers, while its city-specific accounts have anywhere between
11,000 and 171,000 followers.

"The beginning of Instagram was
just a great way for us to connect with the audience - a two-way
conversation to get people interested in our brand," Steinthal
said. "W e built and built and built on Instagram, and
then...we went and grabbed as many of those food accounts as we
could just to give us more real estate on a platform we were
really committed too. Instagram for us has been massive, both for
the community development and growth overall, our business."

Reeling them in

As Instagram rolls out new tools and features, both Stang and
Steinthal say they're excited about how they use them to continue
growing the business.

"The biggest thing for us lately
that's been new is that Instagram Stories are just so powerful,"
Stang said. "One of our
biggest things with Instagram is that we just want people to know
that we do things with a certain purpose and we're committed to
people knowing that we don't take free meals. When you see
something that we posted, it's something that we actually ate and
we actually went there."

The Infatuation has also started
doing what they call "restaurant review ride-alongs"on Instagram
Stories so they can let their audience in on the dining
experience.

Both Stang and Steinthal admit
that while all the Instagram love is great to see, someone using
the hashtag "#eeeeeats," for instance, may not necessarily know
what The Infatuation is, be a frequent reader of the site, or buy
tickets to Infatuation events (which is one of the main ways the
company makes money). The founders don't see it as a bad thing,
though.

"They're in our world and they
may not even realize it yet," Steinthal said. "So we just need to
do the job of reeling them in."